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The 1950s Golden Age of Haute Couture
Christian Dior himself described the period immediately following WWII as a “golden age” of fashion and culture.
In this two-part class, we take you behind the seams of France's legendary haute couture industry to meet the moment, makers and models that defined one of the most iconic eras in fashion history.
Class descriptions
Class 1: Designers of Dreams
Christian Dior was certainly at the heart of the artistic flowering of the haute couture in the post WWII era with his “New Look” silhouette, but he was far from the only designer who made the 1950s a golden age of fashion and design.
In this class, we will meet a pantheon of influential designers who made this period possible, all with their own individual flair and talents. These designers include Cristobal Balenciaga, Pierre Balmain, Hubert de Givenchy, and Madame Grès among many other well and lesser known designers whose own work reveals Dior’s “New Look” was not so new after all, nor was he its sole creator.
Class 2: Behind the Seams
For a fashion era quite literally built on the bodies of women, there is a bit of irony to be found that many–but not all–of the period’s leading fashion designers were men. But the sartorial genius of the era’s leading fashion designers would be all for naught without the innumerable women who made it, wore it, and disseminated it to the masses.
In this class, we step behind the seams of the haute couture industry and into the fashion houses and fashion magazines to meet the many influential women (and a few men) who quite literally made the golden age possible. We will meet the models and makers, muses and celebrity clients, high powered fashion editors and photographers who made the designers’ dreams a reality.
What you will learn in this course:
- The cultural and historical significance of the haute couture industry and the 1950s golden age
- The important designers of the period and the distinctive characteristics of their work
- How to date and distinguish between the different silhouettes of the era including and beyond the “New Look”
- How haute couture houses operated
- How fashion was disseminated beyond elite clientele
- Get to know the important taste, decision, and image makers who defined the couture's golden age beyond designers
About Cassidy Zachary
Cassidy Zachary is a fashion historian, published author and professional podcaster. She is co-founder, creator and host of the podcast Dressed: The History of Fashion. She is also the founder of the popular blog turned Instagram account @The_Art_of_Dress where every week she shares her passion for fashion history with over 300,000 followers around the globe. In addition to co-authoring the book Fashion and the Art of Pochoir, she has contributed to numerous publications on fashion history and has lectured on the topic throughout the United States. Her work is cited in Vogue, The New York Times, and WWD among many publications. She is currently pursuing her PhD in History at the University of New Mexico where she is studying the relationship between fashion, race, and identity in the American Southwest.
April Calahan is an art and fashion historian, writer and professional podcaster living and working in New York City. She served as a Special Collections curator at the Fashion Institute of Technology for more than a decade, and her work has been featured in Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, WWD, The Guardian and The New York Times. She has lectured at cultural institutions around the world including Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Yale University, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne and Parsons School of Design.
In addition to authoring/co-authoring three books on the history of fashion, she is also the co-Executive Producer/Host of Dressed: The History of Fashion podcast, with her longtime collaborator Cassidy Zachary.